On a mild, slate-gray spring day in Portland, Oregon, a scruffy man in his thirties wanders into the St. Vincent de Paul chapel in search of a tube of toothpaste. He hasn’t shaved in a week, and his jeans haven’t seen a washing machine for quite a bit longer.  He looks wary – his eyes dart left and right -- but he is both patient and polite.  

"They treat you nice here," he says, as he waits in the lobby for a volunteer from a social service program located in the church basement.

One of the people responsible for this respectful atmosphere is Father Gary Smith, S.J. (Society of Jesus), who arrives moments later.  He glides in with the brisk, fluid steps of the college athlete he once was.  At almost 60, he is agile and energetic, with a shock of frosty hair, a rakish silver moustache and riveting blue eyes.  In jogging shoes, Levi's, and a blue and white-striped T-shirt, he looks youthful and vigorous.  The energy comes not just from his powerfully positive attitude but from, as he says, “my love affair with Christ and my calling to serve Him."

Later that morning, on his daily walking tour of the area, he passes the Sisters of the Road Café, where handwritten window signs announce hot meals for $1.50. The café has become a refuge for the area’s poor who need not only a good cheap meal but an atmosphere of courtesy and respect, rare commodities for society's discarded, shunned, and forgotten.

A café volunteer, gangly, with a full Afro and a toothless grin, stands outside, push broom in hand.  His eyes brighten when Father Smith stops to shake his hand. But several men loitering nearby give Smith the once-over as he passes.

"Who's the dude?"

"That's Father Gary, man," says the café volunteer.

"A priest? Get out. That dude's really a priest? For real?"

Father Gary Smith is for real. He is one of several angels of the street who serve the poor and needy as members of Outreach Ministry (OM) in the Burnside area of downtown Portland. Father Smith says he is striving to reaffirm the mission of the gospel while continuing on his own path to spiritual fulfillment. In a column for a ministry newsletter called Outreach Update, Smith writes: "... we are called to be bearers of God's love and truth, and, as bearers, we take that love and truth into our culture where there exists the bruises and flickering flames caused by homelessness, loneliness, excessive wealth, racism, injustice."

Outreach Ministry helps meet the basic needs of more than fifty people, assisting them in finding inexpensive rooms in one of the neighborhood’s SRO hotels, obtaining medical care and budgeting their welfare or disability checks.  But sometimes what makes the most difference in people’s lives is simple, compassionate human contact.

Father Smith is quick to credit Sister Maria Francis Waugh, O.S.F. (Order of Saint Francis), who founded Outreach Ministry in the 1980s, as well as staff members and countless volunteers who fuel the program with love and hard work. Smith says that by helping the needy a person can grow closer to God. A sign in the streetfront OM offices best sums up their mission: "We are continuing what He began."